Sensible advice to make your financial life better.

We devote Sensible Thinking^TM, our online newsletter, to fundamental principles and timely information about money-related issues. There are no promotional messages.

On this page, you can sign up to receive Sensible Thinking by email or link to previous articles (categories below):

Taxes
Investments
Saving
Distribution
Miscellaneous

Taxes

Taxes are a fact of financial life. In general, it's easy to spend time and effort shifting taxes from one year to the next, and to miss significant opportunities to defer taxes for much longer periods of time, or even avoid them altogether. In part, this is because shifting taxes this year seems so active, while the methods that actually reduce lifetime taxes have less immediately visible effects. We've written these articles to help you focus on the main chance.

• Cut Your Taxes Now! - Two simple steps you can take to reduce your taxes permanently.
• Establishing a Streamlined Tax Structure – Organize your financial life for tax efficiency.
• Take Advantage of Low Taxes on Investments – Dividend and capital gains taxes are at historic lows – make the most of it!
• Five Simple Rules for Harvesting Capital Gains – Learn when you should sell your investments for tax purposes, and when you should hold on.
• What To Do with Your Income Tax Refund – Here's a broad hint – we don't recommend spending it all in one place!

Investments

There are a few themes here, consistent with our view of how to succeed at investing: diversify, be patient, and keep your costs down. We'll let you decide which articles illuminate which themes best.

• How to avoid the next Madoff scam
• Stock Market Decline – How Bad is it?.
• Mutual Funds Tracking Lehman Indices Unaffected by Lehman Bankruptcy – Many Sensible Financial clients hold exchange traded...
• Market decline and volatility - what does it mean for my portfolio? – How should you respond to a market downturn.
• Fifty Ways to Leave Your Broker – Article discussing why you might be uncomfortable, why you shouldn't be, and what you can do about seeking out a new financial advisor.
• Load Mutual Funds – Hazardous to Your Wealth – Review of how much load funds could cost you.
• After Enron - Protecting Your Retirement Nest Egg – Invest your retirement assets for maximum benefit
• Mutual Funds vs Separately Managed Accounts – Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) are hot! Just ask the broker who sells them. Should you buy?
• 2003 Standard and Poor's Analysis Confirms Benefits of Index Investing – Should you expect a managed mutual fund to outperform an index fund?
• The Hidden Costs of Mutual Fund Investing – Psst! Most mutual funds are expensive – how much do yours cost?
• How much diversification is enough? – Diversify your portfolio to reduce risk and keep costs down at the same time.
• Finding the Next Great Fund Manager – A few fund managers are famous for "beating the market" over extended time periods… how can you choose one in advance?
• War, Uncertainty, and Your Investment Account – Should you stay out of the market until the War on Terror is over?
• What Can You Do About the Mutual Fund Scandal? – Keep more of your hard-earned mutual fund profits.

Saving

You have to save (spend less than you earn) in some years if you want to retire or put your kids through college (spend more than you earn) in other years. We show you how to make saving easier.

• Anyone Can Have a Roth IRA – Review of the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 with examples and ways you can advantage of the new legislation.
• Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Raise – Your employer matches 401(k) contributions – take the money!
• Financing College – You can save for college and get tax benefits, too!
• Education Savings Account Scorecard – See a detailed comparison of your saving options.

Distribution

Now that you have retired (or are thinking of retiring), it's time to spend some of those savings you worked so hard to accumulate. But how fast can you spend them? How can you be sure you won't outlive them? You can start your thinking and planning here.

• Annuities Can Reduce Your Risk – This article is the first in a series introducing immediate annuities as a tool for retirement resource management.

Miscellaneous

Thoughts to help you improve your finances, conceptual underpinnings of financial planning… Useful ideas that don't fit in the other categories.

• Start the New Year Right – Why (financial) New Year's resolutions usually fail, and how you can succeed with yours.
• Meet the Halls – a purely imaginary family that help us illustrate all manner of financial planning issues. In the first article, we focus on saving for retirement.
• Charitable Contributions – Reduce the cost of helping your favorite charity.